1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information delivery system, an information processing apparatus, and an information delivery method.
2. Description of the Related Art
A printer driver normally has a role to convert print data received from an application into data having a format with which a printer can print out data, and to transmit the converted data to the printer. Recently, there has also been a printer driver (digitizing driver) that converts print data received from an application into data having a format of image data (an image file). Examples of the format of image data to convert include a PDF format, an XPS format, a TIFF format, and a JPEG format.
Furthermore, a technology referred to as a virtualization driver is known. The virtualization driver converts print data received from an application into intermediate data (in an EMF format, for example), and transmits the converted intermediate data to a printer driver (real driver) that actually performs printing. The printer driver (real driver) that actually performs printing is a printer driver that converts the intermediate data into data having a format with which a printer can print out data. This enables a user, by only performing printing to a single printer driver (virtualization driver), to change printers (real drivers) for each print job to output. Moreover, because a printer driver to which a virtualization driver transmits intermediate data is not always such a printer driver that converts the intermediate data into printing data, it is also possible to digitize the print data by transmitting the intermediate data to a digitizing driver.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2013-186824 discloses a printing system in which an information processing apparatus notifies a smart device of a print job generated by a printer driver of the information processing apparatus and acquires the setting for the print job and information about a printer of an output destination from the smart device.
However, it has not been possible for users to transmit image data to various devices including a printer by the same unified operation as a printing operation, without being conscious of a usable format of image data. That is, in the conventional technology, the user has needed to take the trouble of converting image data into the image data in a format usable in a destination device by a data conversion application or the like in advance and then starting up a transmission application or the like corresponding to the device to transmit the converted data.
Therefore, there is a need for an information delivery system, an information processing apparatus, and an information delivery method that allow the user to transmit data to various devices including a printer by the same unified operation as a printing operation without being conscious of a usable format of data.